PW: At Houghton Mifflin, Reprints &Rediscoveries

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At Houghton Mifflin, Reprints &Rediscoveries
Joan Iaconetti -- 11/3/97
I thought I knew everything about the New Yorker and its literary traditions," recalled Houghton Mifflin senior editor Christopher Carduff, "and then I read William Maxwell's appreciation in [the now-defunct] WigWag magazine of Maeve Brennan's work."
Carduff searched for the two long out-of-print collections of short fiction by Brennan, a New Yorker staffer (1949-mid-1970s) who, besides publishing short stories in the magazine, also contributed to "The Talk of the Town" under the pen name "The Long-winded Lady." "I fell in love," Carduff said.

That love was more than a passing fancy: on November 12, Houghton Mifflin will publish The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin, Carduff's compilation of stories by Brennan, who came to the States at 17 with her father, the Republic of Ireland's first envoy to Washington, and never left. "The same characters appear in related stories scattered throughout two books, and my fantasy was to present them in better order," Carduff said. "They have the organic unity and artistic integrity of a novel, like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio."

Carduff believes New Yorker readers of a certain age were as mystified as he was about Brennan's disappearance from the magazine. Only after he'd commissioned Maxwell, who had been Brennan's fiction editor at the New Yorker, to expand his memoir as the book's introduction did Carduff learn Brennan's heartbreaking story: in the 1970s she began to suffer psychotic episodes that led to her taking up residence for a time in the New Yorker restroom. Her whereabouts in the 1980s were largely unknown, beyond a few hospitalizations, and she died in 1993 at the age of 76.

Carduff sees a sizable audience who are "nostalgic about the old New Yorker. Brennan is an unwritten chapter of their history, an unjustly forgotten name." Indeed, an early starred PW review (Sept. 22) helped contribute to what Peter Strupp , associate director of public relations, terms "an outstanding response" from the trade. Consumer promotion will include advertising in selected upscale magazines and newspapers, highlighting the enthusiasm of authors Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant for Brennan's work.

And that literary bastion the Algonquin Hotel, where Brennan once lived, is featuring her stories in its new Monday literary readings. The New Yorker's Brendan Gill and Kennedy Fraser ("who once said her ambition was 'to be the next Long-winded Lady,' " noted Carduff), will read from Brennan's work on November 24.

Next October, HM will issue The Springs of Affection in Mariner paperback, at roughly the same time it publishes Brennan's The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker as a Mariner paperback original. He is confident Brennan will be another rediscovery like Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald, whose The Blue Flower and The Book Shop have enjoyed great success in recent Mariner trade paperback editions and essentially gave this British novelist her first significant American audience.

It's safe to say Fitzgerald has become the star of the Mariner imprint," said Carduff. "Others had tried her before in hardback, but sold no more than 4000 copies. We have many more than that in print." Reprints of Fitzgerald's earlier works are planned. "Hers is a happier story," he added; unlike Brennan, Fitzgerald, who published her first novel 20 years ago at age 60, is alive to enjoy the renewed attention to her work.
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